Cocaine, gun and liquor found in car stopped for ‘excessively loud’ music

Three teens were arrested early Sunday morning after police found cocaine, a gun and liquor in their car during a traffic stop initiated by the car’s blaring sound system.

A patrolman, on foot in the area of First Avenue South and Ocean Boulevard, said he saw a black Chevrolet Camaro blaring “excessively loud” music while traveling north at 1:23 a.m. The officer yelled for the driver to turn it down, “but he failed to do so and continued driving,” according to a police report.

The officer got into a deputy’s patrol car and stopped the Camaro near 400 N. Ocean Blvd.

Officer Christopher Turner told the driver he was being pulled over for his loud music and asked the driver why he didn’t turn it down, according to the report.

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The driver “stated that he did not realize that was what I was telling him to do when he passed by me,” Turner noted in his report, adding that the driver probably couldn’t hear him over the music.

As Turner was writing a citation, another officer by the car, Horry County Sheriff’s Office Deputy A. Johnson, said he saw someone in the rear passenger seat “reaching for something in between his legs.”

Johnson asked the 18-year-old man, identified in the report as Brady Phillip Lottchea of Pawleys Island, to exit the vehicle. As he was exiting, police say they noticed a handgun and a pill bottle in a pocket on the back of the front passenger seat, according to the report.

All of the vehicle’s occupants were detained as officers “retrieved the handgun and the orange pill bottle” that contained a plastic baggy of a white powder substance that field tested positive for cocaine, the report stated.

The driver, identified as 18-year-old Dylan Scott Paynter of Murrells Inlet, claimed possession of the gun and drugs, police said in the report. Paynter was charged with the unlawful carry of a gun and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. He was also cited for a noise ordinance violation.

Police say Lottchea was wanted out of Georgetown and he was placed under arrest for extradition.

Another passenger in the vehicle, 19-year-old Michael Bryce Peed of Havelock, N.C., was charged with being a minor in possession of liquor after police say they found an open bottle of Crown Royal in his backpack.